Gaza: Benjamin Netanyahu faces up to the new reality of a changed political landscape

Benjamin Netanyahu has a reputation as the most hardline of Israeli leaders.
Yet he decided - at least for the time being - to hold off from the sort of
war which so many of his predecessors felt it necessary to authorise.

Israel has to balance its security considerations against international public opinionPhoto: Sebastian Scheiner/AP

There will be no repeat of Operation Cast Lead, the previous invasion of Gaza. Mr Netanyahu has allowed diplomacy to take precedence, even though both his aerial bombardment of Gaza and his subsequent negotiations with Hamas have given his foes the international legitimacy they have long craved.

Some - perhaps even Mr Netanyahu himself, in a previous age - would regard this as a sign of weakness. In fact, it is a recognition of changed circumstances.

Israeli spokesmen lwere saying the aims of military action had been achieved - that the ceasefire would bring an end to rocket attacks on southern Israel. Yet there was already a ceasefire in place when it began its bombardment with a missile strike hitting the Hamas military leader, Ahmed al-Jaabari.

The real story is Israel's need to come to new terms with its neighbours.

Mr Netanyahu, a shrewd operator, may indeed have realised this from the beginning; the negotiations now about to commence always his goal, achieved with some degree of military underpinning.

One issue not stressed enough, in this era of the Arab Spring, is that times have changed for Israel itself. There was a time when, facing a fight for its existence with strong western backing, it could afford to retreat into a default position of using overwhelming force in its own defence.

After all, the Arab dictators it faced were equally unflinching - in their rhetoric, at least, even if their actions often failed to match up.

Now Israel has a political base that is more divided and broad-ranging than ever before, and allies that are profoundly uneasy about its policies, whatever their public support. It has to weigh up the economic and diplomatic costs of war in difficult times for the West, and with complex coalitions of religious and secular groups needed to form governments at home.

And suddenly its neighbours are also pluralist. This is first and foremost true in Gaza, where not just Hamas but Fatah, the mainstream secular Palestinian movement, and more radical groups like Islamic Jihad compete for popularity. Hamas itself has new democratic allies abroad, in many cases allied to the United States - Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar prominent among them.

Israel has to balance its security considerations against international public opinion, particularly American, in a political environment that is now nebulous and shifting.

The last week has sidelined the Palestinian Authority, once the so-called "partner in peace". This has baffled and outraged commentators, yet it was already a busted flush. A deal with Hamas, enforced by Egypt and the Arab League, is a much bigger prize.

Whether Egypt has the technical capability to give the security guarantees over weapons smuggling that Israel will demand is another matter. Indeed, Israel will want to have a clearer understanding of the wider strategic ambitions of countries like Egypt and Turkey, which both recognise Israel and remain allies of Hamas, a group which was still last night demanding that "Zionists go back to Germany".

That understanding will be difficult to attain: after all, it is not clear that even Egypt knows the extent of its own ambitions.